Kevin:
> I think the word "Lumpen" has a more modern
> equivalant="Redneck" (poor southern white repubs?)
Not really. "Redneck" is a cultural identity, while "Lumpen" refers to a structural position in society defined by relations to the production process and social status. A WV coal miner or a Southern construction worker can be characterized as a "redneck" but he certainly is NOT "lumpen" - he is a member of the working class. Lumpen, otoh, is a predatory or parasitic element within the low socio-economic stratum - it denotes people who are not working class bur rather prey on it - criminals, house flippers, slumlords, check cashing/loan sharks, drug dealers, enforcers, addicts, pimps, idlers, etc. What these groups of people have in common is extraction what economists call "rent" - or the payment for one's monopoly position in the market rather than for any services rendered. In other words, they take advantage of the working people's limited access to alternative housing, financial services, life options etc. and simply prey on them.
While Yoshie correctly observed that the term is a bit fuzzy, but so is definition of most social groups. At the same time, the concept has empirical meaning i.e. it is possible to empirically determine who is and who is not lumpen (even if some cases may be "borderline") and the term has analytical usefulness. That usefulness comes in the form of distinguishing between working class and other social elements that look similar but are not working class.
More importantly, that distinction points at a larger issue that there is another dimension that cuts across socio-economic class lines - social contribution or utility. Each class, working, professional, techno/managerial, or capitalist, has subsets that differ in their level of social contributions or utility. Each socio-economic stratum, itself is divided into parasitic/predatory elements and productive ones. It makes sense to talk about lumpenproletariat, lumpenprofessionals, or lumpencapitalists - which simply denote parasitic elements that prey on others by virtue of their monopoly positions, as well as "ordinary" proletariat, professionals/managers or capitalists that actually create social utility.
Such a distinction has both theoretical and practical consequences. From the theory point of view, it introduces the element of relative monopoly power (i.e. monopoly within a particular social confines, even though the society as a whole is not monopolized). From practical point of view, it identifies friends and foes of progressive social change which by definition aim to reduce predation and monopolistic power and increase social utility.
Wojtek